


above, beneath, betwixt, between

by pocky_slash



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Horror, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Gen, Haunted Houses, Haunting, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2014-11-07
Packaged: 2018-02-24 12:14:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2581142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocky_slash/pseuds/pocky_slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The giant house off the back road appeared to be the perfect place for Erik to pull over and wait out the storm, but the dark, untouched rooms inside seem to multiply as he wanders through them and the air is heavy with dread. </p><p>He doesn't believe in ghosts, but something wants him to leave just as strongly as something else wants him to stay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	above, beneath, betwixt, between

**Author's Note:**

> For **spoilery** content notes, see the end of the story. Title from The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. Thanks to **pearl_o** for the beta!

Eventually, the rain gets so bad that Erik gives up the idea of driving through it.

It's unusual for him. Given his command of the car, if he can't see, he usually still has no issue pushing through to his destination until he's too tired to go on. The wind on this back road is dangerous, though, knocking down tree limbs left and right, and he begrudgingly decides to pull over, at least until it passes.

He's spotted a tiny indent in the trees, enough to pull off the road, when a flash of lightning illuminates a house just a little further along. It looks large and old and, Erik would put money on it, abandoned. Empty. As good a place as any to stay for the night. It's not, he reasons, as if there's anyone waiting for him at his destination. 

He turns the car back onto the road and continues slowly until he hits the driveway. There are two cars in it already, but they've been there for some time judging by the vegetation that's grown up around them. The land around the house looks like a jungle, like the forest has crept in after years without upkeep. It certainly doesn't look like anyone is home, so Erik grabs his umbrella and briefcase from the backseat, then runs up to the front door. The umbrella does little to protect him from the gusts of rain flying horizontally in the wind, but he's more concerned with the briefcase. He's not prepared to put the digital lock to the test of water damage, but he knows better than to leave it in the car, even if the area does seem deserted. If anyone at Frost International got wind of him letting it out of his sight for even a moment, he'd be fired on the spot.

He pauses on the porch, out of the worst of the rain, hesitating as he stares at the big wooden doors. Something strange has come over him, a buzzing in his veins, the urge to leave as quickly as he can. He has no idea where it's come from--he's not afraid, or at least, he wasn't up until a moment ago. There's no one to miss him--he has a week off after the intense business conference in Cambridge that he's returning from and no one waiting for him in his apartment in Queens. There's no need to risk himself to hurry home, and yet that's what his body is encouraging him to do; adrenaline is pumping through his system as his brain screams at him to turn around.

He shakes it off, rolls his shoulders and opens the front door.

He'd imagined he'd have to use his abilities to pop the lock, but the door opens smoothly without interference. Inside, the house is moderately warm and entirely dry. Whatever's eaten away at the shutters and left the exterior of the house moldy and overgrown hasn't ruined the structure or the roof, at least not yet. He pulls the door shut behind him and looks around. The furniture is covered with dust cloths and the dust cloths are covered with dust. Everything is covered with dust--cobwebs hang from the ceiling and have completely overtaken the corners. No one has been in this house for a very long time.

He leaves his briefcase and umbrella on the ground near an ancient chair and pulls out his cellphone. He swipes on the flashlight app to get a better look around the foyer, but light doesn't make anything look more inviting. The light casts shadows on the wall, tall and dark and frightening, the kind that would have sent Erik running to his mother as a child, but he's grown past that, he knows it, even as the creeping sensation in his stomach returns.

Distantly, he thinks he can hear a whisper telling him to leave. He's obviously been watching too many scary movies.

Despite the gloom and the dirt and the disrepair and the fear he won't admit is growing inside of him, something about the house is definitely intriguing. He finds himself wandering the rooms in exploration, finding more furniture draped in cloth and more items caked in dust. The house is huge--much bigger than it seemed from the road and bigger, even, than it seemed from the driveway. It seems to go on for miles--rooms and rooms and rooms filled with relics that have been long abandoned, up until he reaches a door that's bolted shut. He wants to open it. He can--he can feel the bolt, the lock, feel the old iron of the mechanisms, but just as strong as the urge to open it and go deeper into the house is the urge to turn tail and run.

His hands shake, frozen halfway to the door, and his body lurches backwards. It feels like something else has moved him, he's so distant from the action, but it's the nudge he needs to turn back towards the front of the house, ignoring the itch under his skin that still yearns to go deeper.

The mouldering rooms look the same on his return, and he can't help but wonder about them. He can tell, even with the grime and decay, that the fixtures of the house are expensive. The door was open, the house is visible from the road and has clearly been long abandoned, but no one has been through. Many of the items inside must be antiques--he imagines a thief could clean up nicely by ransacking a single room. Yet all of the rooms remain untouched, save by time.

It's strange. He chalks it up to Westchester, to the fact that it's a back road and anyone who uses it regularly, who can afford to live here, doesn't need to hock moldy antiques for money.

At his second walk through the foyer, he decides to visit the upstairs. If he's going to be here for the night, he might as well find a bed to sleep in. The front staircase is large and grand, and it takes little to imagine it in its prime, polished and freshly carpeted and presenting the heads of household to some lavish party, like something out of _Downton Abbey_. He shakes his head and puts his hand on the bannister.

Then freezes.

Out of nowhere--absolutely, positively nowhere, he's back at the hospice with his mother. He's overcome by the antiseptic smell, by the distant murmur of soap operas and nurses cheerfully chattering away at patients, by the sight of his mother, lying in that bed, unaware of where she was, who she was, who she was with. He's overwhelmed by all he felt then, the anger, the despair, like his world was ending, like he didn't know how he was going to go on.

He chokes on it. He takes a step back from the stairs and squeezes his eyes shut. He has no idea where that memory came from--he usually buries it down deep, underneath everything else, neatly filed away in a cabinet that's chained and locked and fused shut. He's shaking again and he has to blink back tears. He feels wrung out and exposed, though there's no one else here. He wants to be somewhere comforting, familiar, but he doesn't give into the impulse to get back into his car.

Because that's probably it, isn't it? His frightened mind, keyed up from the drive and the storm, fed by too many horror movies, trying to get him back on the road and back home. He's angry at himself. He's furious, actually, that his own brain would betray him like that, would stir up such awful memories just because it's _frightened_.

It makes him twice as determined to stay the night, and he marches up the stairs without looking back.

The upstairs is more of the same, but with less natural light. His cellphone comes out again, and he turns the flashlight back on. The hallway seems to go on forever, and most of the doors he opens reveal what he'd expect--bedrooms caked in dust, bathrooms outfitted with dirty mirrors, offices full of mouldering books. He wonders how many people lived here in the house's prime. There are five bedrooms on this floor alone and the house is at least four stories tall and has an entire other wing he hasn't explored yet. 

Something draws him to a room on the right, something stronger, even, than his desire to keep wandering into the house. It's a bedroom same as the others, just as dusty and disused. An old wheelchair is next to the large four-poster bed, and there are trinkets and toiletries still laid out on the dresser--a watch, a handsome silver cigarette case, a stack of science books. Erik opens the cover of the one on top, Darwin's _Origin of Species_ , and notes the edition was published in the late '50s. He supposes that answers how long the house has been empty.

He glances up into the dirty mirror. He looks terrible, his damp and scraggly features exaggerated in the stark cellphone light. He turns it off again--the window shades are open and enough of the dim light from outside is coming in that he can see. He should conserve his phone battery if he's going to be here all night.

Outside, lightning flashes, and Erik swears, just for a moment, there's someone in the mirror with him.

A trick of the light. It's an old house. He's tired. He can't see well in the dark. It's probably just his mind playing tricks.

He pointedly crosses to the bed and pulls off the dust cloth. He's staying here tonight. His subconscious will just have to deal with it.

The bed underneath the dust cloth is old and musty, but not dirty and the faint scent, like old books or relics in an attic, isn't necessarily off-putting. He takes off his shoes, because his mother didn't raise a slob, and lies down on top of the blankets. The storm is still raging outside and Erik's heart is still beating too fast, but he's here for the night. He's decided. He's staying.

He watches the shadows dance across the bed's canopy as lightning flashes outside. It's almost comforting. After all the mounting fear and anxiety, something about lying in the bed is warm and soothing. He feels himself drifting off, his eyes heavy--

Something is pulling at the bed canopy.

He tries to tell himself it's another illusion, but the movement is enough to startle him out of sleep. The fabric is rippling and he can see the distinct impression of what has to be a hand pressing against the fabric, trying to rip through--

He jumps out of bed and backs up, nearly tripping over the wheelchair, but he sees nothing. There's no one on the bed canopy. And how, his newly-wakened mind asks, could there be? The fabric couldn't support someone's weight, especially the weight of someone who would have a hand that big. There's no one in the room with him. There's nothing here and there's certainly no such thing as ghosts. 

It's the house. The house is getting to him, that's all.

When he climbs back into bed, he lies on his side and faces the wall. It's more comfortable, is what he tells himself.

It's strange, how easy it is to fall asleep despite his racing heart, the adrenaline pulsing through his veins. It's like someone's drugged him, or maybe like something is comforting him. He feels warm, like he's wrapped up in someone's arms, like blankets are wrapped tight around him in an embrace. Like he never wants to leave.

He doesn't know how long he sleeps. He doesn't know if he sleeps at all, or just hovers on the edge of it, feeling weightless, like he's dissolving into the house around him. He does come back to himself, though, sharply and abruptly as someone shouts in his ear, " _GET OUT!_ "

He leaps from the bed, ready to attack, but there's nothing there. There's still nothing around him, but he still hears the voice.

" _Get out!_ " it shouts, except there's no one there and he can't even tell what direction it's coming from. It's coming from inside his own head. " _Get OUT!_ "

He bolts from the room, tripping over his own feet, but the voice follows him, a constant whisper, _getoutgetoutgetoutgetout_.

"Who are you?" he shouts, but of course no one answers. He's alone, he knows he's alone, he knows he should stop and assess what's happening to him, but his body is in a panic and he can't slow down. He bounds down the stairs and into the foyer, the voice following him, the whispers surrounding him. He runs for the door, but it won't budge. The lock isn't engaged and even tugging on the hinges with his powers isn't moving it.

"This isn't funny!" he yells. "If you want me to fucking leave, you have to let me out!"

He doesn't want to leave, though. He does, he's terrified, he needs to get out, but he can't make himself. Something in him is drawn to this place, wants to go deeper, and he can't tell if it's just to spite the voices telling him to leave or something else, but he doesn't think twice before abandoning the front door and running back towards the house.

" _GET OUT!_ " The force and volume of it makes Erik feel like the house should be shaking with it, but it's not. He turns down a hallway and sees a door open just a crack. He dives for it, jumping easily over the lamps that fall from the tables against the wall to shatter on the ground. He gets his fingers around the door and yanks it open, triumphant.

There's a stairwell down to a basement. It's dark, too dark to see, but Erik rushes down regardless. He has his phone, still, with its light, and he's almost compelled, drawn further into the house and he ignores the echoing shouts for him to leave, pounding down the stairs and into the darkness.

Until, halfway down, he feels something twist around his ankle and pull.

He falls the rest of the way down the stairs and hits the bottom with a sickening crunch.

*

When Erik opens his eyes again, there's a man sitting on the floor across from him. He's pale but handsome--boyish, almost, though Erik guesses they're around the same age. His blue eyes seem to glow in the dark.

"Who are you?" Erik croaks, sitting up slowly. His head doesn't hurt as much as it should after that fall. Nothing hurts as much as it should, actually.

"My name is Charles," the man says. It takes Erik a moment to place the voice as the same one that's been ringing through his mind, ringing through the house, all night. That voice was commanding and angry. This one is mostly...sad. "I live here. Now you do, too."

Erik moves to get to his feet, to tell Charles he's crazy--Erik's here for the night and nothing more, and if he really is the same person who's been harassing him, than Erik will certainly be taking that up with the police.

That train of thought, those words, disappear as he stands, however. They disappear the moment he glances down and sees his own body on the floor, neck twisted unnaturally, limbs splayed on the concrete.

He stumbles backwards in his haste to move away from the body--from his body--and a scream wells in his throat. It must be a trick. It can't be real, just another illusion like all the others.

It's not, though. Something in him knows. Something in him can tell. He can feel it in all the places he can't feel his damp clothes or the ache in his bones from the fall down the stairs or even the hard concrete under his feet.

"I tried to warn you," Charles says. "I tried. But you were too stubborn. You wouldn't leave. You should have left."

Charles stands too. He looks morose, defeated, and he walks slowly towards Erik.

"If you didn't want this to happen, why did you lure me in?" Erik asks, even though he already knows the answer.

"It wasn't me," Charles says. "It was--"

"The house," Erik finishes. He shivers and looks around the basement. 

"I don't know what it is," Charles says. "It brings people in. It needs people. It wants to feed on them. It got me and my sister years ago. It's gotten so many since. I stayed to try and warn them, to let them know, to save them--sometimes it works, and sometimes..." He looks sadly at Erik and reaches out to touch his arm. The touch is cooler than he would expect, but surprisingly solid in a world that's become insubstantial. 

"You stayed?" Erik asks.

"It's my house," Charles says. "Or, it was. I inherited it. I feel...responsible, I suppose. I'm a telepath and I thought if I could use that to get in people's heads--but I can't, not really. I can't have a conversation with them. I can project, though. Sick feelings, fear, the need to leave, along with the occasional memory of a scream. I can manage a shouted phrase or two. Usually that alone is enough to scare people away."

"I'm stubborn," Erik says.

"I noticed," Charles says, his mouth lifting into a half smile. 

Behind them, a horrible noise rips Erik's attention away. He turns in time to see the walls bending and parting somehow, opening in a way that should defy physics, should be structurally unsound, but the ceiling above them is solid. The noise, though, is like nothing Erik's ever heard. He's not even sure he's hearing it--he might be feeling it somewhere deep inside of him. He'd be sick, he's sure, if he had a stomach left, if not from the noise then from the long black _things_ that emerge from the void where the walls have opened, the things that are wrapping around his legs and torso--the legs and torso of his body--and pulling it across the floor.

"Don't look," Charles says, and lays his hand on Erik's cheek, turning his face away from where he's staring, frozen, at the sight. "It's better if you don't look. It's horrible to watch, especially when it's your own body." 

The noise gets worse, but Erik concentrates on Charles, on the feeling on his hand against the side of Erik's face.

"You'll be going soon too," Charles says.

"Going?" Erik asks.

"To whatever's after. Or wherever you want to go, I guess," Charles says.

"And you?" Erik asks. The noises behind them become even more disturbing. They both wince. Erik forces himself to focus on Charles' face, his eyes, the freckles across his nose.

"I'll be here until the house isn't any longer," Charles says. "I can't let anyone else become trapped."

Erik nods and touches Charles' shoulder as the noises reach a crescendo, then attempts to touch the wall. His fingers move through it with little resistance.

"We can't manipulate the house, only the things inside of it," Charles says, watching as Erik pulls his fingers back out. "It's hard to be precise without being able to feel anything, though, thus the lamps shattering earlier."

"That wasn't on purpose?" Erik asks, and the noise, abruptly, stops. Erik knows he if he looks behind him, his body will be gone and the walls will look normal again. He's not sure he's ready to see that.

"No," Charles says. "I just can never get a good grip on anything."

"What if you don't need a grip?" he asks. He's reasoned that if Charles can still use his telepathy to some degree, he might still have some ability to manipulate magnetic fields. He's not tested it yet, mostly out of a building fear that he won't, that this vital part of him will be extinguished, but he closes his eyes and--

" _Oh,_ " Charles breathes, and Erik opens his eyes. An old, dusty dumbbell is rotating in the air in front of them. It's not as sure as it always was--Erik has to struggle more than he has since he was a teenager--but it's there. He can feel it.

He lowers the dumbbell back onto the shelf where it was resting and then, slowly, turns to look at the place where his body was. Charles' hand finally drops from the side of his face.

His body is gone. There's no trace of it, not even of the trickle of blood on the floor from where he hit his head. It's like it never happened.

"I suppose you'll be moving on, now," Charles says.

He's sad again, when Erik looks at him, the same haunted expression that Erik first saw when he opened his eyes after his fall. He imagines all the time alone in this house. He imagines watching all those deaths and thinking about how he could have saved them if he'd just tried harder.

"I don't have anywhere to be," Erik finally says slowly. "I'm not in any rush."

Slowly, Charles' mouth curls back into a smile.

*

Moira hates the idea of pulling over so close to her final destination, but the rain and wind are offering little recourse. She was doing fine until she turned onto Graymalkin Lane, but the weather here seems twice as bad as it was on the main road, and she definitely doesn't trust herself to navigate the twisting roads in a storm this bad this late at night.

She's about to pull off into the woods, praying that no one hits her, when she catches sight of a large house just beyond the treeline. She keeps going and finally the driveway presents itself. 

The house looks old and dilapidated, certainly not lived in. There are a couple cars outside, but they're covered with debris--leaves and tree limbs and vines, as if they've been there forever. That solidifies her decision--no one will notice if she takes cover inside the old house for a few hours, just until the storm dies down.

She sprints to the big house, waiting nervously on the porch to catch her breath, overwhelmed, suddenly, by the desire to run away. Fear is sinking into her, the deep, dark kind that haunts her nightmares and her weakest moments. Her hands are shaking and she struggles to make herself take the doorknob and push into the house.

Maybe she should just drive away. Maybe she should just leave.

A crack of thunder and gust of wind startle her, blowing rain up under the awning and encouraging her to take the doorknob. 

The metal burns her at first touch, scorches her skin. She shrieks and jumps backwards, staring down at her palm.

There's nothing. No red marks, no signs she's been burned.

"You're losing your grip, MacTaggert," she tells herself, and tentatively takes the knob again. It doesn't burn her this time, so she pushes open the door and goes inside.

The house is dark and old and abandoned, that much is for sure. Everything is covered in white dust cloths and layers of filth and grime. She imagines it was once a grand old place, but it must have been like this--empty and shuttered--for years at this point.

At least, that's what she thinks until she sees the briefcase and umbrella as she wanders further into the living room.

She probably wouldn't have noticed it at all if she hadn't been so nervous, so hyper-vigilant. It's covered with the same amount of dust and grime, but the lock on the briefcase is digital and the umbrella is from Ikea. She has the same one at home, bright orange and patterned. She got it a year or two ago, and yet here it looks as ancient as the tattered furniture and wallpaper.

That's when she hears the whispering.

_getoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetout_

It's a hiss, barely noticeable at first. She thinks, absurdly, that maybe the radiator is kicking on, before realizing that no one here has paid an oil bill in years. It continues, getting loud enough for her to make out the words clearly, but she can't trace a source. It sounds like it's coming from all around her, from in her head. 

She's been driving too long. That's it. She's just been driving too long because there's no such thing as ghosts.

She glances back at the door. It's closed, though she doesn't remember closing it--she was going to run back to the car and get her bag if it seemed like a good place to camp for the night. Maybe the wind blew it shut, but she didn't hear a slam. She didn't hear anything but her own footsteps, her own breathing, her own heartbeat, and now this whispering.

_getoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetout_

She wanders further into the house, wishing she'd brought her gun with her. Why hadn't she brought her gun with her? What was she thinking? Her hand keeps clenching at her side, reaching for a phantom weapon, and the whispering keeps getting louder. She turns to look behind her again and...and...

The candelabras are floating. They're definitely floating. They're floating towards her. They're floating towards her quickly.

_GETOUTGETOUTGETOUTGETOUTGETOUTGETOUTGETOUT_

She runs.

She runs through the halls of the lower level. Every time she tries to turn from her path, something flies up to block her way--a fireplace poker, a frying pan, some distorted metal statue--until she's in a conservatory, surrounded by windows, shaking from fear and absurdity. She's running from _candleholders_ she's in a strange house and objects are flying around, someone is whispering for her to leave, Nick is never going to let her hear the end of this but she needs to leave, she knows she needs to leave, she doesn't know why but she knows if she stays something terrible will happen.

There's a door in the conservatory but it won't budge. The handle turns, but the door doesn't even tremble in its frame, doesn't give at all. She's stranded in a glass room with a storm pounding on the ceiling, the walls, and a heavy metal candelabra racing towards her. She drops to the ground, curls up, and covers her head with her arms. 

Above her, the sound of breaking glass. The candelabra has clattered to the ground, and that's enough for her. She leaps to her feet and grabs a watering can to smash out the shards of glass still sticking out of the window frame, then climbs out as quickly as she can, ignoring the way her clothes catch on the glass shards, the deep cut along her palm as she holds onto the frame for a moment to steady herself before jumping to the ground.

She sprints around the house, the vegetation swaying in the winds as if it was growing, coming towards her. She ignores it, and finally she sees her car. She dives in and has never in her life been so grateful for keyless start. The car is on and squealing into reverse before she even has her door closed. She guns the engine down the drive and back out into the storm. She doesn't care. She can make it to White Plains. Anything is better than that house.

*

From the large front windows, Charles and Erik watch the young woman speed down the driveway and back out onto the road.

"I think she would have made it even without smashing the window, but good work," Charles muses. "She seemed alert and resourceful."

"So was I, and I still ended up dead in the basement," Erik says mildly.

"I'm sorry, darling, I didn't mean--" Charles starts to say, but Erik squeezes his hand and Charles cuts himself off. Erik keeps watching until the woman's car is out of sight, only then satisfied that she's really escaped.

"I know," Erik says, finally looking away. "I was stubborn. You gave me a dozen opportunities to leave that I ignored."

"On the bright side, you're here now, at least?" Charles says, and Erik changes his grip so that their hands are clasped together, fingers intertwined. He never realized how grounding it was just to feel the world around him under his fingers, even though he chose to live his life alone. Now Charles is the only thing he can really touch, really feel. There are worse fates.

"I am," Erik agrees.

The storm continues outside and the house groans with the missed opportunity of a meal. Inside, Erik holds Charles' hand and can't say he regrets any of it.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Content notes:** Story involves major character death, but the character then becomes a ghost and is actually sort of happier that way?


End file.
